In Job Hunt, B-Schools Play Matchmaker

From One-on-One Advising Sessions for Students to Databases That Track Ideal Industries, More Programs Add Personal Touch

By

Melissa Korn

Updated March 6, 2013 7:31 p.m. ET

Business schools are exploring a new service: matchmaking.

After relying for years on assembly line-like interview schedules, career-services offices at some top schools are taking a personalized approach to the student job hunt. Some are beefing up one-on-one advising sessions to help students define career goals, while others are making individual introductions to alumni or sending job postings to student clubs.

ENLARGE

Lisa Haney

The new tack comes as M.B.A.s consider careers in industries like technology and clean energy, where companies tend to hire one or two students at a time, rather than in large numbers like at finance and consulting firms, traditional B-school employers.

"There's been a complete upending of the model," says Pulin Sanghvi, assistant dean and director of the Career Management Center at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He reorganized the 16-person office last year to strengthen individual advising, alumni relations and connections with new employers, particularly private-equity firms, hedge funds and technology startups.

Around 80% of the companies that hired Stanford M.B.A.s last year took just one student; only 16 hired four or more.

This spring, Stanford will hold its second networking event featuring representatives from companies with fewer than 300 employees. Many don't even have open positions, Mr. Sanghvi says, but at minimum it allows students and firms to get acquainted, so that when a job becomes available, the firm already has a student in mind.

Meanwhile, for the past three years Stanford students could opt to join a database that tracks their ideal industries and geographies, as well as academic credentials and work experience. With student preferences in hand, the school seeks out companies that could be a match, a process Mr. Sanghvi likens to a feature on Amazon.com Inc.AMZN-0.11%'s site that recommends items similar to the one a shopper is already considering purchasing.

To be sure, schools aren't walking students all the way down to the altar, so to speak. Most efforts are aimed at introducing students to potential employers, then leaving those students to build the relationships themselves.

Vidya Vasu-Devan, a 2012 Stanford graduate, indicated on a questionnaire early in her first year there that she wanted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to come recruit at the school.

Stanford invited the philanthropy for a meeting in spring 2011, and the school became one of just two feeders for the foundation's new summer internship program. Ms. Vasu-Devan, 28 years old, spent her summer there and joined the group's program-related investments arm full-time after graduation last year.

That referral service can work both ways. Some companies with very specific criteria—say, Russian fluency and a background in quantitative finance—might ask a school to suggest students with those qualifications, rather than broadcasting an opening to all students.

Fred Staudmyer, assistant dean for career management at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, has been spending more time contacting specific student groups with such requests.

"It's much more blocking and tackling than it used to be," Mr. Staudmyer says of the process.

London Business School's effort will kick into high gear in coming weeks, when every student without a job offer is assigned a career-services adviser. Those staffers hold weekly conferences to brainstorm leads, and send out packets of specialized résumés for students with niche interests, such as private equity in India.

It seems subjective—students who curry favor with career staffers may get the plum opportunities—but schools insist they don't play favorites. Fiona Sandford, executive director of career services at LBS, says that while she will match students to a company's criteria, she won't recommend a student based on her own impressions.

Having observed the mass-hiring approach at his own alma mater, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Ryan Frankel, chief executive of New York translation company VerbalizeIt Inc., vowed to keep his own prospecting very targeted.

Mr. Frankel recently reached out to student clubs and faculty at three top B-schools, as he looks to add two or three new M.B.A.s to his 10-person team.

"We want to be more refined in the matchmaking," Mr. Frankel says. "Culture really matters" in such a small company, and the tailored approach weeds out those who wouldn't be a good fit.

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